


the sun like a morning moon

by feralphoenix



Series: how they felt after the flood [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Codependency, Grief/Mourning, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queerplatonic Relationships, Recovery, Steven Universe AU, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2015-12-03
Packaged: 2018-05-04 18:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5344919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feralphoenix/pseuds/feralphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The clock is on the wall behind you, right where they’re probably looking, and you hug them tighter and wish for the thousandth millionth time that there was something you could do to fix all this.</i>
</p><p> <i>There isn’t.</i></p><p>When the rest of their family is off on missions, Frisk and Chara are left to look after the temple, and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sun like a morning moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [simplycarryon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/gifts).



> _(She’s gotta be out of my mind by now._ – [You have decided to live.](http://marchenwings.tumblr.com/post/129425845454/you-have-decided-to-live-this-is-your-fifth-day))
> 
> with extra thanks to tori, who helped me come up with the kids' individual and fusion gems.
> 
> the codependency tag is for chara and asriel, btw. extra warning for chara briefly deadnaming themself and another character/mixing up pronouns during a trauma episode.

“There are a lot of things about this planet that suck,” Chara says.

You look up at where they sit, facing the transporter, drumming their heels against the wood panels of the counter they’re sitting and you’re leaning on. “Yeah?”

“A _lot_ of things.” They must not be in the mood to elaborate, you figure, after they’ve been silent for another few minutes. It’s not like you can blame them.

You take another sip of the coffee Chara made for you both, and then set your mug back down. It’s cold. Glancing at the clock reaffirms for you that everyone is half an hour later than they said they would be, and you rock your weight back onto your heels, forward onto your toes.

Chara’s posture is rigid, and you think maybe they won’t like it if you try to touch them right now, but you’re so scared you can hardly breathe and so you inch your hand across the countertop, slowly, slowly. You bring it to a stop next to Chara’s, close enough to feel their body heat, close enough to serve as a question (a plea), but not in contact with their skin.

Their feet thud against the wood again, a steady rhythm, a metronome.

“There are a couple things that don’t suck, I guess,” they go on, just when you’ve nearly lost the thread of the conversation completely. “Names, I mean. Saying you and me and everybody, we all have value because we’re us, we’re not replaceable. And being allowed to call ourselves something other than _she._ I never liked that, even before I knew there were options, before I let myself start thinking about why I felt that way. So, like, Earth sucks but Homeworld was worse.”

You nod, even though they’re not looking at you, even though it’s not like you know well enough to compare.

Chara turns then. The bags under their eyes are maybe the worst you’ve ever seen them, but they smile at you and their expression is so, so soft.

“And there’s you,” they say. “You’re the one really and truly good thing to come out of this mess.”

They pick their hand up off the countertop, but instead of laying it on top of yours they wrap it around your shoulders, pull you in close to them. You wind your arms around them, grateful for the contact, for their chin digging into the top of your head and their gem pressing uncomfortably into your shoulder as their left hand squeezes it. Their body is warm, and it’s shaking.

 _What if they don’t come back, what if something went wrong_ is just a fear, for you; just a possibility. For Chara it’s an old nightmare. The clock is on the wall behind you, right where they’re probably looking, and you hug them tighter and wish for the thousandth millionth time that there was something you could do to fix all this.

There isn’t.

(They come back an hour late, everyone perfectly unharmed, all apologizing for leaving you two to your own devices for so long. Toriel even picks you up to reassure you, and you rest your cheek on the faceted sodalite of her gem and don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry as you drink in her warmth and solidity with your whole body. She’s here; she’s safe. It’s fine.

Chara, curled into a ball in Asgore’s arms not three feet away, is sobbing.)

 

 

The studio with its mirrored walls is ostensibly for everybody, but the rail along the walls is conspicuously made to your height, so you think the only reason the others pretend otherwise is to spare your feelings. Which—they don’t have to do, because you know you’re the only one who actually needs the practice, but it’s nice of them.

Today, though, when you open the door—Chara is there, dressed for exercise, laced into their pointe shoes. Their eyes are closed, and they are dancing alone.

You close the door and sit politely in a corner, afraid of disturbing them. You should have called out to them the moment you saw them, but their expression is so intense; you feel a little like you’re intruding on something sacred, but you also don’t want to look away.

Because Chara doesn’t dance like this with you. They’re still elegant in a way that you just aren’t, bent wrists and perfect fluidity and never a breath out of place, much more like the ballerinas you see on human TV than you would ever have thought a small gem like the two of you could be. But just like you can feel yourself move with a little more grace when you fuse with Chara, when they dance with you they’re more spontaneous and relaxed, more organic, a compromise between the rhythms in your heart and theirs.

This isn’t how Chara moves on the rare occasions when they spar with Undyne or Sans or Papyrus, either. They’re still metronome precise, but—that lightness of step is gone. And unless they’re matching up with you, Chara almost never drops out of pointe, but here they are flat-footed, arms outstretched as if to trace something solid that you can’t see.

It takes you until they get up on one toe and lean into a long turn, visibly shuddering with strain, to realize this dance isn’t _meant_ to be performed alone.

The dance that made Pyromorphite was a pas de deux, mostly, but it has some other style blended into it that you can’t decipher. Ballroom, maybe, or something else that’s grand and weighty and decadently tender. You can only see Chara’s side of it, but their arms are always stretched out into half of an embrace, or reaching out to hold a hand that isn’t there. It doesn’t even take a minute for the empty space next to them to start looking like a gaping wound. 

Chara takes a breath and leaps high. Their body draws a parabola in the air, and their pulled-back shoulders and slack arms and head pointed downward and defenseless suggest a lift. You barely skid in to catch them before they hit the hardwood floor with their entire weight.

Shock crosses their face, and then they open their eyes, and—you _see_ their hope die, see the color drain from their cheeks. It makes you feel like you’ve done something unforgivably terrible. Chara closes their eyes again, takes a deep breath. You can barely hear them over the pounding in your own head.

“Right,” they mutter, and bring their hands up, dragging their palms down their face. Louder: “Right, we were supposed to practice your pirouettes today. Fuck. Sorry for forgetting, Frisk.”

“It’s okay,” you say, and you want to cry because you know what to say to make _this_ right, but you don’t know what to do about everything else. “Do you want to—I mean, should we—can I…?”

Your words stumble over each other but Chara seems to understand your meaning anyway. They lift their right hand and pat at your cheek.

“You can’t practice if we’re Willemite, dummy,” they tell you, and the patience in their voice is obviously fake but the affection isn’t. “Besides, you can’t… You’re not a replacement for him, Frisk. You couldn’t be if you tried, and you shouldn’t try. That’s not the way you like to dance, and that’s not a good way for anybody to live.”

It’s hard to swallow, suddenly. Hard to see. “…Sorry,” you say. “I know I’m—I’m no good. Sorry.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Chara says, and their weight lifts up off your lap, blurry face swinging up towards yours. Their warm hands frame your face, the red-flecked deep green of the heliotrope in their palm hard-edged and comforting on your cheek. “You don’t have to be Asriel for me, ‘cause you’re already Frisk, and Frisk’s a really valuable thing for you to be. I like you like this.”

They dash tears off your cheeks with soft fingertips, and you close your eyes when they press a kiss to your forehead. It’s amazingly grounding—you’re suddenly a lot more aware of the waxy feel of the hardwood beneath you, and the warmth of Chara’s mouth on your skin, and their hair tickling your face. It’s frustrating, too, because Chara’s the one who needs your help, not the other way around, but you keep making them take care of you instead.

But then they let go of you and stand up, extending a hand to pull you to your feet. Their expression’s as free of pain as you’ve ever seen it, and you don’t think Chara’s good enough at faking it to fool you so totally, so you breathe in and out and let them help you up.

And it’s fine, for the rest of the day. Chara laughs at you when you mess up, then leads you through the steps slower, following along beside you with their hands on your arm and waist to correct your posture. It’s fine. You skip across the floor to the beat of nobody’s heart but your own, and Chara claps for you when you get all the tricky turns right, and even though you’re both stuck on housesitting duty _again_ you feel light.

 

 

The next morning you sleep in, and you’re still rubbing the tiredness out of your eyes as you walk down the stairs and into a shouting match.

“—I’m fine, I keep telling you, I’m fucking _fine,”_ Chara barks. They’re across the counter from Undyne and Alphys and Sans, and all of them are dressed and ready, and your heart’s sinking because from the looks of things those three are definitely going to be heading out on _another_ mission today even though you hardly got to see them at all yesterday. “How much longer are you going to leave me here like I’m just some deadweight, because I am telling you, _this is as good as it gets.”_

“Chara,” Undyne says, palms held out, “just give it more time, okay, kid? Frisk is doing you a whole lot of good, you’ll be back on the roster soon enough, so just be—”

They don’t let her finish, because they start to laugh. Your heart sinks further. There are only two ways that Chara laughs: Tenderly, like they do with you in soft moments, and sharp-edged, the way they are right now. The bright and desperate sound they’re making is never, ever a good sign.

“Don’t tell me to be _patient,”_ they snap, and their voice is high and strained with anger but the ghost of their laugh interweaves something guttural and dark that makes your hair stand on end. They rise up onto pointe and summon a knife, the bloodstone in their hand still glowing with the promise that there can and will be more on the way. “You don’t know, _you can’t know,_ how dare you keep talking about _when I’m better_ like this is something that can be fucking fixed! Like you expect me to just—move on!”

Sans makes like he’s going to call for his own cannons, but Undyne holds up a warning hand, and he just shuffles in front of Alphys instead. “Chara, we’re not—”

“This—” Chara slams a hand into their chest. “This is not going away! I don’t want it to go away! Topaz, she— _Asriel—he—_ he was everything! He _is_ everything! This is all I have left! You can’t tell me to be—happy and— _okay—_ without him here!”

You press your palm against the calcite over your heart, your thoughts just a desperate litany of _please, please, please,_ and you grip the handle of your ribbons with no small relief.

Down in the kitchen, Chara goes on: “So stop acting like I’m just some useless crippled piece of shit clod! Let me fucking fight! Who cares if I die! _It’d be preferable to you forcing me to go on without him!”_

You take the rest of the stairs two at a time, and your hand sweeps out before Chara can pull theirs back to strike. Your ribbons bind their whole left arm flat to their body, keep them tied in place until you can swoop in to wrap them up in your arms too.

Sans and Undyne both sigh and relax, across the counter. Chara’s knife dissolves into light, and their weight sinks into you as the strength leaves their legs. They don’t struggle, but their whole body is shaking.

“Let me go, Frisk,” they force out through gritted teeth, their breath hot against your shoulder.

“No.” You close your eyes, cradle their head with one arm, stroke their back with the other. “I’m here. Let me help.”

“Don’t _want_ your help. Let me go.”

They’re heavy, leaning on you like this, but you bear them up as best you can.

“Welp, there you have it,” Sans says. “Even if you don’t like it, or, uh, really get it at all, just _humerus_ for a while and stay put. We’ve gotta go. Look after Frisk and the house. And Frisk—you keep them in line.”

You nod, and let yourself sink down to your knees. Still caught up in your ribbons, Chara curls up against you, and you try rocking them, imitating how Toriel and Asgore comfort you when you’re sad. Chara doesn’t respond. You can’t tell if they’re calm now or if they’re just sulking.

The sound of the transporter echoes, a little, and you hug Chara more tightly. They hiss into your shoulder.

 

 

You’ve been sitting back to back on the sofa for an hour when Chara begins to talk.

“The worst part is that it’d be easier if I just knew that he was dead. Instead of missing. If there wasn’t still hope. I don’t know what to do anymore. We were never apart. I don’t know how to be Heliotrope—I mean to be Chara, anymore. I don’t know what to do. My whole world is just—gone.”

They shift behind you, shoulder blades digging into your back. You stay still.

“Do you want to talk about it?” you ask.

“No.” A pause. “Maybe.” Another, longer pause. “I don’t know.”

You look at your hands for a little bit. “What was—what _is_ Asriel like?”

Chara breathes in, loud enough for you to hear it. They hold their breath for a moment, then exhale. It sounds like giving up.

“A big crybaby,” they say. “Worse than me. Spoiled. Bratty. Mean sense of humor. But still sweet, for all that. Warm. Safe. He was good,” and their breath rushes out a little, here, their voice starting to shake; “he was a lot better than I deserved. We. I dance for him, but we didn’t have to dance anymore. To fuse, I mean. He’d just hold me, and—then we were Pyromorphite again.”

“What’s it like to be a fusion all the time?” you ask.

Chara is quiet for another long while. “Like a dream,” they say at last. “Hope. And safety. And joy. There was never anything to be afraid of because we were together. There stops being a ‘we’ anymore. Just a ‘me’. You almost forget you were ever separate. You do forget you were ever alone. I didn’t have to be me anymore. I didn’t have to hurt anymore. I could just be with Asriel, all the time, and we could be Pyromorphite and everything was fine.”

You try to grope for their hand without turning around. They find you instead, and their nails dig into your skin as they hang on to you.

“Do you want to… just be Willemite for a while?”

“Yeah, but—I think we should hold off, for right now? Maybe later, if I’m not so—overwhelmed with craving the void then.” You laugh, despite that their self-deprecating humor isn’t really funny at all, and you feel Chara relax against you. They continue: “I mean. Us being Willemite should be about us. Not just about me being lonely. If I—if anything ever happens to me, or if I ever do something I can’t take back. I don’t want to put you into the position I’m in now. ‘Cause it’s. It’s bad. It’s real bad, Frisk.

“There’s a part of me that thinks it just serves me right to have ended up this way. I leaned on Asriel real hard. Probably too hard. I don’t even know who I am without him.

“And you’re—they’ve got us minding each other and all, but I don’t think anybody really expects you to be his replacement. I’ve said so before and I’ll keep saying it, but I don’t need you to be him for me. You can just be Frisk. You’re allowed to stay you.”

You look at your knees for a while.

“I know,” you say. “And I’m—it makes me happy that you don’t want to hurt me, Chara. But every time we fuse, I can feel how much it hurts you to be alone. And I want to help, so—please just let me do what I can?”

Chara shifts behind you, and their arms snake around your middle then, their chin settling on your shoulder.

“Everybody else is right, you know,” they say, and when you crane your head to peek at their expression, they’re smiling bitterly. “You do help me just by being here. Like—fusing with you is nice, but I also like being with you like this.”

You rest your hands over theirs and smile.

“Frisk?” they say, after a while.

“Yeah?”

“Why didn’t you just leave me tied up and go after the others?” they say. “I know I’m not the only one you want to help. You could’ve snuck after them on their mission, but you didn’t.”

You did entertain that thought for a while, but— “I couldn’t do it,” you reply, as honestly as you can. “I couldn’t leave you here all alone. You’d hate it. I wouldn’t hurt you like that. Don’t… you stay here with me for the same reason?”

Chara sighs. “Yeah,” they say, and: “Yeah. Damn it. They’ve really got our number.”

It’s not really funny, but you laugh anyway, and after a minute or two they join in.

 

 

Chara always spends the night in your room. You’ve never had to ask why, because the symbol on the big temple doorway that leads there has Chara’s teardrop-shaped heliotrope intertwined with a topaz. No one ever seems to go in there anymore—everyone feels Asriel’s loss, after all, not just Chara. If anybody _would_ go in, it would be Toriel or Asgore—they’re the only ones who’d be able to open the door without Chara there anyway. But Chara has no other place to go if they’re avoiding their own old room, so: Every night they just wait for you to open up the heart-shaped calcite passage instead, and trail in after you.

You like your room at night. During the day it’s just the same boring pale gray and white as your gem, but once the sun goes down everything turns into softly sparkling blues and purples and pinks. It’s pretty and warm and beautiful and calming just to look at.

Alphys told you, once, that your own gem is the same as your room, under the right kinds of light. You’ve just never seen it yet. Your true beauty is still a secret to everyone, even to you.

The bed is the kind of comfy that you thought clouds must be, when you were younger—and it’s big and covered in heavy blankets and tons of pillows. You can just crawl in and make a blanket-and-pillow nest of it (which you do), and there will still be plenty of room for Chara to curl up next to you (which they do).

“You have the best room,” they murmur, close to your ear. “It’s like being in space. It’s so quiet and soft here.”

“I hope I get to see space one day,” you whisper back. “It sounds really neat.”

Their hand finds yours under the warm weight of the covers, thin fingers wrapping around your palm. “Maybe.”

They’re quiet then, for long enough that you think they’ve fallen asleep—and their voice, faint, breaks into the drowse you’ve fallen into yourself.

“Today was awful.”

Sleepy, you reach out to hug them. “’S okay. We can try again tomorrow.”

They sigh. “I hope so.”

Chara squeezes your hand, and then they’re silent.

You close your eyes and match the rhythm of your breathing to theirs. It’s—it’s good, that Chara doesn’t want to fuse all the time. That they say this helps them too. Because these little moments make you feel like your body’s made of light and stardust all at once. Without moments like this—you wouldn’t be able to stand the wait to become useful, a real member of the team.

But it’s like you told Chara. Even if you didn’t get very far today—even if today was one for backsliding, for them—there’ll always be tomorrow. Chara can’t get better all at once, and you can’t get stronger all at once either. All you can do is take things one day at a time.

In their sleep, Chara snuggles closer to you, pressing their face up to your chest. You smile, curl into them, and let yourself drift.


End file.
